[tor-dev] Remote descriptor fetching

[Karsten Loesing]

On 7/22/13 5:32 AM, Damian Johnson wrote:
> Hi Karsten, I've finally finished implementing stem's module for
> remote descriptor fetching. Its usage is pleasantly simple

Great stuff!

> - see the
> example at the start of its docs...
> 
> https://stem.torproject.org/api/descriptor/remote.html
> https://stem.torproject.org/_modules/stem/descriptor/remote.html

These two links don't work for me for some reason.

> https://gitweb.torproject.org/stem.git/commitdiff/7f050eb?hp=b6c23b0

I'll look into this in more detail on Thursday or Friday, or maybe after
the dev meeting.  I'm excited to see this, but I'm not yet sure when to
find some undisturbed place to focus on anything code-related.

> The only part of our wiki plans that I regretted needing to drop is a
> local filesystem cache (the part that made me think twice was figuring
> out when to invalidate cached resources). Otherwise this turned into a
> pleasantly slick module.

Okay.  I don't think I'll need the local filesystem cache for the two
metrics use cases (consensus-health checker and descriptor archiver).
So, this could be something to add later if we want, IMHO.

> PS. Where does an authority's v3ident come from? Presently I reference
> users to the values in config.c but that's mostly because I'm confused
> about what it is and how it differs from their fingerprint.

The v3 identity is what v3 directory authorities use to sign their votes
and consensuses.  Here's a better explanation of v3 identity keys:

https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/attic/v3-authority-howto.txt

Best,
Karsten